In 4645 BBY, on the ice-blanketed world of Odacer-Faustin the Sith Lord, Darth Drear established the Odacer-Faustin Sith Academy in hopes of achieving Immortality through the use of a complex Sith alchemical formula for an elixir more akin to a virus and specific rituals. He died however soon after attempting the rituals while self-infected with his virus-like elixir aka, "the Sickness".

During the Cold War in 3645 BBY, Sith Lord Scabrous planned to use Drear's elixir and rituals to attain what his predecessor could not, eternal life. Despite using all the ingredients required including the Murakami orchid, he and the entire academy's student body, faculty and staff say for one dockhand, Pergus Frode all fell victim the Sith-created virus that turned them into cannibalistic undead.

The Zelosian people believed that zombies existed on their planet. That particular phenomenon was later attributed to parasitic worms infesting corpses and causing zombie-like movement.

Around 1 BBY an Imperial biological weapons project had been tasked with engineering a virus, under the codename of Blackwing. The virus seemed to turn almost any being, living or dead, who came in contact with it to a mindless flesh-craving undead creature. These creatures seemed to possess only primitive feral instincts after being turned, but were able to communicate and learn from each other through what seemed like unintelligible screeching. They were also capable of operating machinery and handling weapons, such as blasters, and were even able to pilot ships, such as X-Wings and TIE Fighters. The two known outbreaks that occurred during this time were on the Star Destroyer, Vector where Blackwing had been reintroduced to sentient hosts, causing the vessel and its former crew to drift in deep space. Ten weeks after the outbreak, the Imperial prison barge Purge that had experienced engine malfunction docked to the Vector and sent two teams to search for engine parts to repair their ship and move on. Soon after the virus infected nearly the entire population of the barge, crew and inmates with a few survivors forced to escape onto the larger vessel. After a series of close calls, more deaths the survivors escaped the Star Destroyer via a drop shuttle.

Other vessels piloted by infected zombies tried to spread the disease from the Vector but failed and remained drifting in space. One of the vessels eventually crashed landed on Dathomir creating the Quarantine Zone and spreading the infection. Anyone who survived the zone was deemed very lucky.

The following section contains information from a Star Wars Tales1–20 story that was referenced in no other Star Wars Legends source. Lucasfilm considered all Tales 1–20 content that was not "completely outrageous or intentionally comic" to have some level of canonicity within the Legends continuity. Editor discretion is advised.

Han Solo and Chewbacca once visited an uncharted planet which was haunted by dead, living skeletal figures. These zombies were once the 1,000 crew members of a Great Interplanetary Ark that had crashed on the planet some time before. The souls would haunt the villagers every night, because they never made the land. However, Solo laid down two lines of tandgor gems to light a runway for the ghostly form of the Great Interplanetary Ark to land, finally putting the souls to rest.[5]